


Night Needs No Reflection (But He is Just a Man)

by YouLookGoodInLeather



Series: 30 Days of Dark Fandom Challenge (ACOTAR) [1]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Insanity, M/M, Mirrors, Rhysand Got Salty, Tamlin Was a Dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 16:03:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12136032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/pseuds/YouLookGoodInLeather
Summary: The Court of Mirrors is occupied by the King and the King alone, who dethroned the traitor tyrant Tamlin, and lost a lover too. He will not fall like the others. He will not make their mistakes:He knows now to trust no one but himself.





	Night Needs No Reflection (But He is Just a Man)

**Author's Note:**

> Complete List of 'To Do' List can be found [HERE](https://squaddreamcourt.tumblr.com/post/165406755612/30-day-dark-fandom-challenge-filled)
> 
>  
> 
> Prompt:
> 
>  
> 
>  **Rhycien:** Mirrors (Dopplegangers; mirror-versions of a character/setting where everything is it’s opposite; mirror ghost games such as Bloody Mary; narcissism, etc.)

When you lose everyone you ever cared about, you have to learn how to love yourself.

Rhys has always been a fast learner. Amarantha learned that the hard way. Her head, preserved in a block of perfect, crystal clear ice, is perhaps the only thing more beautiful than he himself. And it is quite the compliment to be called more beautiful than a God.

 

***

 

Rhys walks amongst the forests of spring, the fields of wildflowers that house the ruins of the ancient palace. He traces the worn path he made - as he did everything in this new world - through pillars of crumbling stone, rotting oak furniture. Night time is his entourage. A cloak worthy of a true King trails behind him, spreading darkness and stars across the air he graces with his presence, tainting them forever more to be blacker than the darkest night.

Half the world is trapped in night by now, but still he walks. Like those he once fought, he will not stop.

Mercy is not to his liking.

Barefoot upon the dewy grass, he stops before the knees of another. The other does not look up, slumped against a worm-eaten wardrobe. Gaunt, skin a tight, pasty grey, eyes hollow, Rhys could mistake him for dead were his shoulders and chest not rising and falling in the shallowest of movements. Not to mention the curse he wove to force him to endure an eternity. An eternity of a world of his own making.

He crouches. “Another year,” Rhys says with soft warmth, caressing the jaw of the man before him with such tenderness they could be lovers. Only now does the other look up, his once green irises now jet black, the only betrayal of the spell binding him. Rhys did not bother with magic to keep him put. An old fashioned iron chain and collar seemed much more fitting, especially when embellished with faebane. Magic was wasted on this man.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Squeezing his papery skin together, Rhys forces his captive to look around at the land he once ruled, now a desolate wasteland filled with the kind of darkness that Rhys was forced to live in for six centuries. “Aren’t you proud?”

Once, he could bring the man to tears. Now, his features seem to have been robbed of all emotions. He merely looks. Looks without seeing. But Rhysand still sees, and what he sees is beautiful.

Once, he took lovers.

Now revenge makes a ravishing mistress.

“Look,” he whispers to the ear of the other, rotting from the creatures that have cultivated and inhabited this man made furniture. “Look and see what you have created, Tamlin.”

 

***

 

“Perhaps you would like a song of love for a change?” The bard suggests with a hopeful smile that does not cover the pallor of his fear.

“No,” Rhys answers, crossing his legs upon the throne that presides over all. “Sing it again.”

Swallowing, the musician raises his lute one more and picks out the solemn notes that have filled this palace for years. Rhysand never tires of it. If music be the food of love, play on.

 

_“One hundreds years we waited,_

_A curse we had created,_

_Some without faces,_

_Some without eyes,_

_Waiting to reclaim our lives._

 

_And so the girl,_

_Fated cursebreaker,_

_She came to meet her maker._

_Slew beast and worm,_

_And bitter strife,_

_All to be death’s wife._

 

_He met her on the dancefloor,_

_Promised a kiss once more,_

_Then drove the knife,_

_Into her breast,_

_For what he thought was best._

 

_Took crimson as his lover,_

_She who made us suffer,_

_Killed scheming King,_

_And mortal Queens,_

_To sit,_

_upon a throne._

 

_Burned fires deep into Night,_

_Those flaming wings the only sight,_

_Summer, Autumn, Winter,_

_Who dared to called him traitor,_

_To sit,_

_Upon a throne._

 

_Six hundred years we waited,_

_A curse we had created,_

_Some without light,_

_Some without space,_

_One gone without a trace._

 

_He rose up from the waters,_

_Seduced and charmed his daughters,_

_Out of bars,_

_And out of chains,_

_The hatred still remains._

 

_He cut their throats one morning,_

_Just as the sun was dawning,_

_Turned light to black,_

_And sight to lack,_

_To sit_

_Upon a throne._

 

_He saved us from our tyrant,_

_When we had all fall’n silent,_

_Our God, our Lord, almighty,_

_The King of Night,_

_He sits,_

_Upon a throne.”_

 

***

 

Rhysand has brought about total unity. Courts plague the people no longer. Now there is only Night and that which has yet to succumb, and the Palace of Mirrors. No one is chosen, nor privileged. He dwells alone. He will not make the same mistakes as his predecessors.

Servants dismissed for the night, he wanders the corridors. There is nothing sad about it, for this is the time he gets to spend with the only true love he is allowed.

His reflection walks with him. Mirrors are hung on all walls, floors and ceilings; Not just here, but throughout the palace. Each one taken from every court, every hovel, every shadow were the scum of the world lurks, for no one deserves them more than Rhysand. No one deserves to be multiplied a thousand hundred times like Rhysand.

Trailing two fingertips across their surface, he makes his way to his favourite room. It is a small octagon, even the door draped in a mirror. When closed, he can see himself reflected again over and over within all reflections, until he has his own court, one comprised only of himself. Which is the only sensible kind of court to have; Himself is the only one he can rely on, the only one he can protect.

When you are trapped in a dungeon for six hundred years, the only one you can safeguard is yourself. Those whose names he has now forgotten learned that much without him.

 

***

 

He first sees the ghost on the anniversary of her death, an omen he thinks nothing of. Afterall, though she was his mate, he never knew her beyond the realm of dreams, and dreams are not a currency he deals in anymore.

It is only a glimpse. As he jacks himself off, eyes screwed tight, there is nothing to worry about. Then he comes, eyes flying open, and there is a flash of red. A crimson his skin knows all too well.

And that is it. All he remembers is red. A scarlet warning he dismisses the next day, though the night is one long heaving panic attack, spent smashing mirrors and pretty things. “I am alone,” he tells the mirrors. “I will always be alone.”

He mutters this mantra over and over to himself as he tries to fall asleep on the floor of the throne room, looking up at that enormous silver ceiling so that he can watch himself behind and in front. With the diligence and determination that got him this kingdom, he never once binks or slumbers, though his eyes weep and then dry to a chalk like feeling.

So intent is he that he does not notice the reflection of the crimson headed figure sitting upon his throne.

 

***

 

“There is someone here,” he tells his General, near crushing the man’s hands. “There is someone _in here_ and I need you to kill them.”

“You majesty, we have searched the palace thrice over. There is no one there but you.”

“There is someone there.” He does not notice how hard he is shaking. “They will not leave me alone.”

 

***

 

Rhysand no longer leaves the palace. He can not, will not, leave until he finds the infiltrator, whom he is sure is an assassin of some kind. Perhaps one of these spirit walkers he’s heard about, who can traverse through mirrors as if they were simple doorways, interconnected by some vile labyrinth. He will not stand for it.

No one else is supposed to have magic any more.

Though beyond his palace walls the sun is slowly mending and healing the world he so painstakingly destroyed and infected, this takes priority, for it plagues him daily. Crimson chases him everywhere, like the fires once hot on his brethren's tails. He wonders if he too will be burned at the stake like they were. He wonders if someone will be forced to watch as he was.

Fingertips slip up his spine, breath blows gentle on his neck.

He turns, but no one is there behind him. There never was. As always, he is alone.

 

***

 

In his dreams, someone is stroking his hair. They have long, thin fingers, nails long and fine. He thinks it might be his mother, but the voice murmuring to him is deep and masculine. “It’s okay,” the voice whispers. “It’s nearly over.”

“What is?” Rhys asks the void, eyes open. His room looks back.

“I’m getting stronger.”

 

***

 

He has not slept in days.

Eaten? Weeks. Where is he? He’s no longer sure. All these rooms and corridors look the same, all populated by a million mirrors. All he is allowed to look at is himself, though he no longer sees. It is too horrible a sight to witness for so long.

“This way,” The voice guides him on. The voice has been his only companion these past few… months? Years? Time is a language he once spoke, but it slipped past his tongue and left him like the others. Like all have done save for the voice. The voice found him.

They reach a room with mountainous staircases all leading to a throne of the darkest black. He grinds to a halt. He can’t face a thing like that. Without light, how will he know if the thing that follows him is behind him. It makes him sick just to look at it. “I can’t,” Rhys whispers to the voice. “I can’t. I have to watch my back else they’ll get me too.”

“Then I shall watch it for you.”

The reflections of all the mirrors shifts. Something stirs, though he is not moving. Crimson passes, then draws closer, swelling larger and larger until from each corner of the room, red fills the space. Before Rhys’s eyes, the mirrors look as if they are bleeding crimson, bubbling and growing with scarlet as it pushes out in a dome.

A man with crimson hair steps out of the mirrors, mirrored four, eight times over. In perfect synchronization, as if still bound by their mirror home, they walk towards him. And Rhysand knows that face, has seen it so many times both alive and dead. After all, he was the first one to die, for Tamlin took him as a lover long before Amarantha claimed the throne. The man once in a fox mask turned slave to an old friend.

Rhysand killed him out of mercy. He begged for it. He thinks. He’s not so sure. Things are starting to grow blurry.

The eight images merge into one a metre before him, and one man, one redhead offers him his hand. “I never got to thank you for killing him,” the man says.

“I didn’t,” Rhys whispers back. “That was you.” Lucien smiles.

“But that’s how it will be remembered.”

Because he knows he must, Rhys takes his hand and lets him draw him close. “I’ve missed you,” the reflection murmurs. All Rhysand can do is cry. Though Lucien hushes him, it does not stop. His whole body is tearing from the ache of all those years, before and after he lost him forever. Before he forgot what sunshine looked like.

Lips dust his, feel as real as any other he remembers. They Caress and tender his own, drawing and plying upon them with a warmth he once retreated to nightly when Tamlin was not looking. It is all the heavens and all the hells at once, for as they kiss he leads him on towards the throne.

They strip one another with trembling hands; Neither clothes nor death dare parting them. Stumbling footsteps cannot stop them. Rhysand wants to drown in him forever. Something laced into his bones tells him he’ll soon get his wish.

Naked, they fall to knees upon the steps. Rhys kisses down his bare body, savouring those delicate hips he knows so well, the curve of his stomach, the sweet spots of his thighs. The mirror made man before him arches and gasps just like he remembers, fingers twisting in both their hair as if it will keep him tethered to the moment for eternity. But Rhys is quick and clever, especially with his silver tongue, and soon his throat stings of cum and his chin is damp.

With those hands he’s missed so fiercely Lucien pulls him closer, coaxes his dick to erection. Ever familiar with bedroom games, though that was never his choice, Rhys splays the reflection’s legs to display his ass as he arches his back, whimpering in anticipation. Smirking, Rhys enters him. Fucks him hard against the marble staircase. Listens to his gasps echoing off the walls so that sound too is reflected, the man he once escaped in amplified a hundred times over. It is better than seeing himself has ever been.

Lucien comes again before he does. He’d never done that before, having a lot more patience than the elder, but Rhysand always found the idea of it insatiably sexy. “Take me up,” Lucien pants. “Fuck me on the throne.”

Complying, Rhys picks him up by the arse, his legs hooking around his waist, and he carries him up. “You sit,” Lucien whispers, so he sits, his lover nestled upon his lap. Shards of shattered mirrors coat the floor, the arms. “I love you, Rhysand.” He realises he is sobbing as he is lovingly hushed and stroked. “It’s okay. It’s nearly over.”

“I know. I’ve waited so, so long.” Lucien picks up a long, triangular fragment off of the chair.

“The world will mend. It can begin again.” He leans in and kisses the King’s forehead, stroking his jaw. “It’s time to come home.”

 

***

 

The general and his first officer look about the throne room. “This place stinks,” the officer says, scrunching up his nose.

“Rot’ll do that to a place, no matter how lavish.”

They look at the throne and the General sighs. “How long you think he’s been there?”

“A month maybe,” he guesses.

“We gonna… move him?”

“No.” The general takes one last look, then turns away. “This place needs to be forgotten. Too many ghosts.”

“It’s the palace Tamlin built, right?”

“And died in. Nothing good has ever happened here.”

“We’ll call the priestesses in the morning,” he says, straightening and squaring his shoulders. Decisions have always made him feel better than inaction. “Get them to banish whatever is lurking here.”

“You really believe in Ghosts, General?”

“I do now. Madness is a kind of ghost, in a way. Our own past is far more dangerous than any demon, if you ask me.”

Together they leave, placing the throne and the dead king behind him, bloodied glass still clamped in his decaying hand. Both are too wrapped up in their own disgust to notice the reflections of the men sitting in the corpses’ place.

“Tomorrow then,” the officer says. “And let whatever lingers here move on.”

**Author's Note:**

> First entry for my early start on the October challenge '30 Days of Dark Fandom'. Contains violence, sexual content, and disturbing themes. 
> 
> Prompts were requested on tumblr (@squaddreamcourt).  
> Original Prompt list by @hallsofvalhalla.


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